Thread: Motivation
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Default May 13, 2018 at 09:39 AM
 
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Originally Posted by Sleepyspoon View Post
I feel like I’m stuck and have absolutely no motivation for anything I can’t concentrate barley have left the house in weeks idk what to do my family thinks I’m just being lazy even when I do feel good enough to get done what needs to be done I just can’t I always end up getting distracted or forgetting I’m paranoid all the time idk what to do
Hi Sleepyspoon, welcome to PC

I’m sorry that you are struggling with this, it’s not an easy thing to overcome. And it sounds like, as well as motivation, you are also struggling with concentration, memory and your family thinking you are lazy. Well, I can empathise with all of that, unfortunately. I will share some strategies over the years that have helped me, but everyone is different so they might not necessarily help you as much, so you will need to experiment to find what works for you.

Motivation - I wasted a long time waiting for motivation to come to me before I would do something. I find that it very rarely does. Instead, I found that starting something, before having motivation, usually stimulates your motivation and then you want to do more things. This works with anything from boring housework to fun things like hobbies that you feel too apathetic to do. I like to craft and often have to force myself to start a project, but then I find myself getting into it and often then want to do something else creative.

It’s linked to an idea from Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) called ‘do it anyway’ where you make steps towards your (value-oriented) goals regardless of how you feel. Often, as I said, motivation then appears, and you get into it, but even if you don’t, you have still moved forward and achieved something, which is good for self esteem.

I struggle to leave the house most days, but I force myself to walk my dog in my local park as he loves it so much. Often being there makes me feel better by the time I get back home, and then it’s much easier for me to leave the house a second time to do whatever it is that I need to do next.

Concentration - this can be a big issue too, but one thing that I found helpful for motivation is also good for concentration, and that is setting timers. The ‘rule’ is that once the timer goes off, you can stop, guilt-free. I started setting a timer for 10mins and then a 20min break. It’s much easier to talk yourself into doing anything for only 10mins than it is a longer period. I’ve used this with everything from studying to housework to hobbies: it’s very versatile.

Once the 10mins is up, you can stop without guilt that it was ‘only’ 10 mins. If you don’t set another timer that day, well, you still did 10mins, which is better than not doing anything at all. Often, as I said, motivation creeps in and I will do more, or multiple timers, either increasing the length, or sticking with 10mins if my concentration is poor.

On a really bad day, I can’t even concentrate for 10mins, and I might call it a day. It’s hard to try to accept that, but I try to remind myself that at least I tried.

I’ve been struggling with concentration lately, but I’ve still had birthday cards to make. So to get around that, I’ve had to be more organised to start them earlier to allow only 10mins here and there. Yes, I made mistakes at times, and had days where I couldn’t do any card making, but I have finished all of the things I needed to do so far, and I’m making progress on the next lot, even if it is taking me way longer than I would ideally like.

Memory - I struggle with my memory a lot and the only way I’ve found around that is to write down everything. I have daily to do lists, weekly to do lists, and I also set reminders on my phone, or alarms if I need to do something at a certain time. Some people don’t like lists etc, but if I don’t write it down, there is no way that I’m going to remember to do it! So lists are my friend. Some people find a long list to be overwhelming, and I get that as sometimes it can be. It also needs to be realistic as not achieving everything on your list each day can be demoralising.

I prefer to split each activity into its subsequent parts eg grocery shopping would be divided into ‘write shopping list, go grocery shopping, put away groceries’. Personally, I get more sense of achievement out of ticking off 3 items than one, and some days, I wouldn’t manage to do all 3 parts so if I only wrote down ‘grocery shopping’, then I’d feel like I didn’t do anything even if I did make the shopping list. But I know that doesn’t work for everyone so you’d have to experiment a bit to see what works best for you.

Family - My family calls me lazy too. Sometimes I think that they are right, but mostly I know that I am trying my best and I don’t feel that it’s a fair label. I certainly never used to be lazy. I don’t know how receptive your family would be to changing this, mine aren’t, but you could try talking to them about this. Using ‘I statements’ might make them less defensive about it, such as “I feel very hurt when you call me lazy. I’m really trying my best, but I find it very hard to do the things that I used to do. Please could you not say that anymore.” I’ve got to say though that it didn’t work with my family: they tell me that they don’t think I’m lazy (right after they call me lazy), and then the next day, they call me lazy again about something. It’s very frustrating, but I try not to listen to their nonsense.

The other option would be to ask your psychiatrist and/or therapist, if you have one, to talk with them; a kind of family intervention strategy. I’m assuming that you have been diagnosed with psychosis as you posted your question in this forum, so your treatment team could explain to them the negative and cognitive symptoms of psychosis that you are struggling with, and how that means that you aren’t lazy. That might help if someone in a ‘position of authority’ tells them you’re not lazy, if they won’t believe you.

The other thing to mention with these issues is medication. If you take medication, it can exacerbate these types of issues by making you overly sedated, foggy, apathetic, and lacking energy as side effects, and so the dose may need to be lowered, or the medication changed to something that causes less or none of these issues for you.

Unfortunately, psychosis can also cause all of these problems on its own. Sometimes it’s really tricky to work out what is a medication side effect and what is a negative symptom. Negative and cognitive symptoms are notoriously hard to treat, but some of the atypical antipsychotics, like Abilify/aripiprazole may possibly help.

There is also the possibility of comorbid depression complicating things as depression after a psychotic episode is common, and depression can mess with motivation, concentration and memory too. So I would really recommend bringing up these issues with your prescriber to see if there’s a treatment angle to work as well as all of the self-help suggestions that I’ve given.

I wish you all of the best with this

*Willow*
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